Aerosol mass spectrometry produces large amounts of complex data, the analysis of which necessitates chemometrics – the application of advanced statistical and mathematical tools to chemical data. Here, we perform a data-driven analysis of multiple aerosol mass spectrometric data sets, to show that the traditional separation of organics and inorganics is not necessary. The resulting 7-component aerosol speciation explains 83 % to 96 % of observed variability at our boreal forest experiment site.